BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.

"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

He added that the two were being interrogated in the police headquarters of Basra.

The British forces informed the Iraqi authorities that the two soldiers were performing an official duty, the source said. British military authorities said they could not confirm the incident but investigations were underway. Enditem

"A grab from footage released on September 20, 2005 shows weapons which Iraqi police said were confiscated from two undercover British soldiers after their arrest in Basra, southern Iraq, September 19, 2005. (Al-Iraqiya via Reuters television/Reuters)"

Basra is relatively stable compared to central Iraq where violence involving insurgents, civilians and coalition forces is a daily routine. The city has rarely been a site of clashes between insurgents and coalition troops, nor is it a victim of regular terrorist attacks. This week, however, things changed, but not thanks to Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda ilk.

On Monday, two British soldiers were arrested and detained by Iraqi police in Basra. Within a matter of hours, the British military responded with overwhelming force, despite subsequent denials by the Ministry of Defence, which insisted that the two men had been retrieved solely through "negotiations."

British military officials, including Brigadier John Lorimer, told BBC News (9/20/05) that the British Army had stormed an Iraqi police station to locate the detainees. Ministry of Defence sources confirmed that "British vehicles" had attempted to "maintain a cordon" outside the police station.

After British Army tanks "flattened the wall" of the station, UK troops "broke into the police station to confirm the men were not there" and then "staged a rescue from a house in Basra", according a commanding officer familiar with the operation. Both men, British defence sources told the BBC's Richard Galpin in Baghdad, were "members of the SAS elite special forces." After their arrest, the soldiers were over to the local militia.

What had prompted this bizarre turn of events? Why had the Iraqi police forces, which normally work in close cooperation with coalition military forces, arrested two British SAS soldiers, and then handed them over to the local militia? A review of the initial on-the-ground reports leads to a clearer picture.
Fancy Dress and Big Guns Don't Mix

According to the BBC's Galpin, reporting for BBC Radio 4 (9/20/05, 18 hrs news script), Iraqi police sources in Basra told the BBC the "two British men were arrested after failing to stop at a checkpoint. There was an exchange of gunfire. The men were wearing traditional Arab clothing, and when the police eventually stopped them, they said they found explosives and weapons in their car…It's widely believed the two British servicemen were operating undercover."

Undercover? Dressed as Arabs? What were they trying to do that had caught the attention of their colleagues, the Iraqi police?

According to the Washington Post (9/20/05), "Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives." Reuters (9/19/05) cited police, local officials and other witnesses who confirmed that "the two undercover soldiers were arrested after opening fire on Iraqi police who approached them." Officials said that "the men were wearing traditional Arab headscarves and sitting in an unmarked car."

According to Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, “A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them.”
Booby-trapped Brits?

In an interview with Al Jazeerah TV, the popular Iraqi leader Fattah al-Sheikh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and deputy official in the Basra governorate, said that police had "caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market." Contrary to British authorities' claims that the soldiers had been immediately handed to local militia, al-Sheikh confirmed that they were "at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime."
The Special Reconnaissance Regiment and British Covert Operations

British defence sources told the Scotsman (9/20/05) that the soldiers were part of an "undercover special forces detachment" set up this year to "bridge the intelligence void” in Basra, drawing on 'special forces' experience in Northern Ireland and Aden, where British troops went 'deep' undercover in local communities to try to break the code of silence against foreign forces."

These elite forces operate under the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and were formed last year by then defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, "to gather human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions."

The question, of course, is how does firing at Iraqi police while dressed as Arabs and carrying explosives constitute "countering terrorism" or even gathering "intelligence"?

The admission by British defence officials is revealing. A glance at the Special Reconnaissance Regiment gives a more concrete idea of the sort of operations these two British soldiers were involved in.

The Regiment, formed recently, is "modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland" according to Whitehall sources. The Regiment had "absorbed the 14th Intelligence Company, known as '14 Int,' a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS."

This is the same Regiment that was involved in the unlawful July 22 execution - multiple head-shots - of the innocent Brazilian, Mr. Jean Charles de Menezes, after he boarded a tube train in Stockwell Underground station.

According to Detective Sergeant Nicholas Benwell, member of the Scotland Yard team that had been investigating the activities of an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence, the Force Research Unit (FRU), the team found that "military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called 'legitimate targets' such as active republicans... many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians."

Benwell's revelations were corroborated in detail by British double agent Kevin Fulton, who was recruited to the FRU in 1981, when he began to infiltrate the ranks of IRA. In his role as a British FRU agent inside the IRA, he was told by his military intelligence handlers to "do anything" to win the confidence of the terrorist group.

"I mixed explosive and I helped develop new types of bombs," he told Scotland's Sunday Herald (6/23/02). "I moved weapons… if you ask me if the materials I handled killed anyone, then I will have to say that some of the things I helped develop did kill… my handlers knew everything I did. I was never told not to do something that was discussed. How can you pretend to be a terrorist and not act like one? You can't. You’ve got to do what they do… They did a lot of murders… I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it… The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy."

Most startlingly, Fulton said that his handlers told him his operations were "sanctioned right at the top… this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing."
Zarqawi, Ba'athists and the Seeds of Discord

So, based on the methodology of their Regiment, the two British SAS operatives were in Iraq to "penetrate the enemy and be the enemy," in order of course to "beat the enemy." Instead of beating the enemy, however, they ended up fomenting massive chaos and killing innocent people, a familiar pattern for critical students of the British role in the Northern Ireland conflict.

In November 2004, a joint statement was released on several Islamist websites on behalf of al-Qaeda's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Saddam Hussein's old Ba'ath Party loyalists. Zarqawi’s network had "joined other extremist Islamists and Saddam Hussein's old Baath party to threaten increased attacks on US-led forces." Zarqawi's group said they signed "the statement written by the Iraqi Baath party, not because we support the party or Saddam, but because it expresses the demands of resistance groups in Iraq."

The statement formalized what had been known for a year already – that, as post-Saddam Iraqi intelligence and US military officials told the London Times (8/9/2003), "Al Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated Iraq from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have formed an alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight their common enemy, the American forces." Al Qaeda leaders "recruit from the pool" of Saddam's former "security and intelligence officers who are unemployed and embittered by their loss of status." After vetting, "they begin Al-Qaeda-style training, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs."

Yet Pakistani military sources revealed in February 2005 that the US has "resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population," consisting of "former members of the Ba'ath Party" – the same people already teamed up with Zarqawi's al-Qaeda network.

In a highly clandestine operation, the US procured “Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry.” A Pakistani military analyst noted that the “arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them.” Rather, the US is playing a double-game to “head off” the threat of a “Shi’ite clergy-driven religious movement” – in other words, to exacerbate the deterioration of security by penetrating, manipulating and arming the terrorist insurgency.

What could be the end-game of such a covert strategy? The view on-the-ground in Iraq, among both Sunnis and Shi'ites, is worth noting. Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the Shi'ite Imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told Le Monde: "I don’t think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people."

Iraq’s most powerful Sunni Arab religious authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, concurs, condemning the call to arms against Shi’ites as a “very dangerous” phenomenon that “plays into the hands of the occupier who wants to split up the country and spark a sectarian war.” In colonial terms, the strategy is known as “divide and rule.”

Whether or not Zarqawi can be said to exist, it is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that this interpretation is plausible. It seems the only ones who don’t understand the clandestine dynamics of Anglo-American covert strategy in Iraq are we, the people, in the west. It’s high time we got informed.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, London. He teaches courses in political theory, international relations and contemporary history at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Ahmed is the author of The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 and Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq.

His latest book is The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism.
_________________¡Venceremos!

This is the same Regiment that was involved in the unlawful July 22 execution - multiple head-shots - of the innocent Brazilian, Mr. Jean Charles de Menezes, after he boarded a tube train in Stockwell Underground station.

Incorrect the officers involved in this unfortunate incident were SO19 firearms officers, the British Army would have had no involvement in a civil ie police operations.

Quote:

military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called 'legitimate targets' such as active republicans... many of the victims of these government-backed hit squads were innocent civilians.

This may well be true as they would have had no direct involvement although ethically questionable.

Quote:

So, based on the methodology of their Regiment, the two British SAS operatives were in Iraq to "penetrate the enemy and be the enemy," in order of course to "beat the enemy." Instead of beating the enemy, however, they ended up fomenting massive chaos and killing innocent people, a familiar pattern for critical students of the British role in the Northern Ireland conflict.

You appear to be getting confused you have mentioned roles for 14int and FRU (FRU i admit to not knowing much about), then use that as evidence that the SAS? which were captured would be involved in such 'black ops'.

There role will be to gather Intel not set of car bombs, why, when trying to stabalise and leave a country would the goverment want to destabalise a city? Also if the vehicle was charged, why no pictures?

As the article was written by Nafeez Ahmed of the IPRD, London, I would suggest you address yr comments to him.

For some time now, news has been leaking out of Iraq that the occupation forces were themselves responsible for using car bombs to divide and rule (or in CIA lingo, 'destabilize') the population, ie particularly to cause friction and enmity between the Shiite and Sunnis.

The Brits have a long history of using similar black ops in Ireland and all the indications are they are continuing to do so in Irak. What do you think the SAS are about!? And what makes you think that the USUK have any intention of leaving Irak?

BTW, if you care to research the information you will know that the Brits were very quick to retrieve the car and take it away._________________¡Venceremos!

There role will be to gather Intel not set of car bombs, why, when trying to stabalise and leave a country would the goverment want to destabalise a city? Also if the vehicle was charged, why no pictures?

I don't see much evidence that the US or the UK are trying to leave Iraq. All I'm hearing is the same tired bluster about "staying the course" and I understand that a number of US bases are being built in the US.

The chaos could be part of a plan to justify an extended stay in Iraq or to break the country up into three regions à la Henry Kissinger.

I agree that there may well be such 'Black Ops' occuring on the basis that there is no real evidence that they are not, equally that applies to your side of the argument.

However the British government when involved in such activities sub contract, example being Sandline international (Sierra Leonne) even in this example a side was taken, i don't recall people crying out when UKSF were helping the Kurds, Afghans and the Shiites?

Quote:

What do you think the SAS are about!?

You appear to have fallen foul of the media impression of SAS, yes they are undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with yet there role remains the same, long range recon/Intel gathering, snatch squads and when called upon hostage rescue.

As for leaving Iraq, unfortunatley however much UK wishes to leave we are the lapdog of the US.

Quote:

BTW, if you care to research the information you will know that the Brits were very quick to retrieve the car and take it away.

Would that be as quick as the photograthers managed to get to the same car? <note: sadly cannot remember or find where i saw that pic>
In answer to the probable haste in which it was retrieved, the UK forces are still governed by UK laws (See Para murder trials) and as such it would be needed for forensics(UK forces are not as gung ho as our American allies, everything is accountable)

Quote:

I don't see much evidence that the US or the UK are trying to leave Iraq. All I'm hearing is the same tired bluster about "staying the course" and I understand that a number of US bases are being built in the US

See above, also on this note during the war there was much evidence to suggest the Yanks had and were operating from bases in Iran.

I am only pointing these facts out because unlike the US forces in the north UK forces are not killing (still) civ Iraqis and show much restaint when attacked, all the hard work that they are doing(which largely goes unreported) will be unravelled especially with the views being expressed here....that UKforces are involved in 'Black Ops', you are just fanning the fire.

I don't see much evidence that the US or the UK are trying to leave Iraq. All I'm hearing is the same tired bluster about "staying the course" and I understand that a number of US bases are being built in the US

See above, also on this note during the war there was much evidence to suggest the Yanks had and were operating from bases in Iran.

Sure, there had to be somekind of consent from Iran (tacit or otherwise) because they have the capability to make things very difficult for the US and the UK in Iraq, and to do so very quickly.

Please could you not lump together quotes from several posters? Just for clarity's sake.

Quote:

I am only pointing these facts out because unlike the US forces in the north UK forces are not killing (still) civ Iraqis and show much restaint when attacked, all the hard work that they are doing(which largely goes unreported) will be unravelled especially with the views being expressed here....that UKforces are involved in 'Black Ops', you are just fanning the fire.

I think most people would agree that the UK forces are doing a tough job, but that does not exclude us from asking these sorts of legitimate questions. Most of the troops won't be privy to these 'Black Ops' (if they are such) and most of them would probably condemn them.

To say that a few posters on a message board risk unravelling the security situation in Iraq is risible, surely? I would have thought that it was down to broader policy issues, strategy for state building, plans for providing security, jobs, electricity etc.

Your charge of 'fanning flames' just reeks of an attempt to gag the discussion of these possibilities.

The Iraqis themselves have a much better idea of what's happening 'on the ground'...

'Bertha' comes across as an apologist for the SAS. What, exactly, is his/her interest in defending the SAS so enthusiastically?

'She' conveniently ignores the disgraceful history of British Black Ops in Ireland. (But why should I be surprised at that given the racist attitude many Brits have towards the Irish?)

It is that same racism that leads apologists to turn a blind eye to the atrocities conducted by the USUK in what is nothing other than a colonialist war in the Middle East.

The fact is that the Brits slipped up badly in this last incident. I don't think anybody is suggesting that they were intending the kind of indiscriminate killing we hear of in Baghdad.

If that car was booby-trapped (and it would not be the first time such an allegation has been made about the USUK) they were likely planning a car-bomb event which would then have been blamed on the 'insurgents' (or freedom fighters, depending on one's viewpoint).

The UK Parliament, if it had any guts or scruples, would have called for an independent inquiry into the affair ... just as it should have into the recent London bombings. Its silence on both affairs tells us all we need know _________________¡Venceremos!

I wasn't suggesting a few postings on this site pose any issues, just trying to clear up a point that even amongst my friends is favoured ie the SAS we're up to no good!

But you, as do my friends, hold your opinions which i'm sure you enjoy discussing, but i do feel it is counter productive to subject UK forces to a Judge Dredd style law, guilty before proven innocent.

Sadly we may never find out what went on and why, when it led to a clear display of aggression by British forces in Basra and may damage relations signifcantly within the area!

I am definantly not suggesting that this should be gagged! But i am not wholly ignorant of what occurs there having recently come back, whilst a friend will be off (Again)shortly, under contract photographing,this time bizzarely for British forces

But you, as do my friends, hold your opinions which i'm sure you enjoy discussing, but i do feel it is counter productive to subject UK forces to a Judge Dredd style law, guilty before proven innocent.

But i am not wholly ignorant of what occurs there having recently come back, whilst a friend will be off (Again)shortly, under contract photographing,this time bizzarely for British forces

Ah, so you do have a personal interest in the Irak Disgrace. Is your first sentence, quoted above, a grammatical error or just a freudian slip?

And why do you feel that UK forces should be immune from the spotlight of publicity in what is after all an illegal, colonialist war? Or do you feel that --with its long colonialist history-- British forces should be exempt from criticism apropos their Department of Dirty Tricks?

What they did in Ireland, they do today in Irak and on the London Underground. Not just my opinion but that of many across the world._________________¡Venceremos!

'Bertha' comes across as an apologist for the SAS. What, exactly, is his/her interest in defending the SAS so enthusiastically?

I only work off facts, which in these incidents are unlikely to become clear for a fair few years, also as has already been proved <ref Para killings> with the female admitting she lied, not easy to get to the bottom of.

I am no advocate off Tony and his chums, but i understand why there aren't independent inquiries in these circumstances.

I am interested on your opinion that there is racist attitude towards the Irish, this is a sweeping statement and racist in itself, i know of not one person that dislikes the Irish.....

This month Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, announced the establishment of a new regiment, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), to provide covert surveillance expertise for operations by the SAS and the Special Boat Service. Although he did not specify which experts he had in mind, the new regiment is largely based around the surveillance specialists of the 14th Intelligence Company, also known as “the Det” (Detachment), which has operated in Northern Ireland for many years. (The Times, April 2005)

[Picture] This is Brigadier Gordon Kerr, identified as being involved in the deaths of at least fifteen Irish Republicans during his tenure as head of the FRU or the Force Reconnaissance Unit in Northern Ireland. Promoted from Lt. Colonel to Brigadier for his efforts, Kerr was given the job as military attaché in Beijing, largely to keep him out of the way of an investigation into the activities of the FRU in the assassination of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane and as many as fourteen other people.

THERE’S a phrase set aside in the British army for men like Brigadier Gordon Kerr and it’s “Green Slime’’. Soldiers don’t mince words, and to regular squaddies and military brass, Kerr and his Intelligence Corps are on roughly the same level as pond life. Highly effective, immensely powerful and very dangerous pond life, but pond life nevertheless.

This is from an article by Neil Mackay on Kerr written in November 2000 for the Sunday Herald. That pond life has been given the job of ‘democratising’ Iraq speaks reams about the real objectives of the occupation of Iraq and surely should disabuse anyone of the idea that we’re there to bring ‘human rights’ to the Iraqis.

Assigned by foreign secretary Jack Straw before the invasion of Iraq took place, to ‘de-Baathify’ Iraq, it will come as no surprise that he was subsequently handed the task of heading up the re-branded FRU, now known as the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRR) in Iraq, almost certainly the group that the two agents provocateurs captured by Iraqi police in Basra, belonged to if not directly, then because of the relationship between the SRR and the SAS.

The FRU’s collusion with right-wing death squads in northern Ireland is a fact established by the so-called Stevens Commission into collusion between the British state and groups like the UDA (the Ulster Defence Association) and the now disbanded (or again, re-branded) Royal Ulster Constabulary in the assassination of leading Republican activists. The FRU passed on intelligence to groups like the UDA obtained via plants or in some cases, ‘freelance’ operatives who played fast and loose with the facts in order to get their monthly pay cheque. It was dis-information that led to the assassination of Pat Finucane in front of his family.

These loyalist double agents, including the Ulster Defence Association’s chief of intelligence, Brian Nelson, were handed packages of photographs and military reports detailing the movements and addresses of potential targets, which in turn were passed to loyalist murder gangs. In total, an estimated 15 civilians died as a result of FRU collusion with loyalist terrorists. One victim of this collusion was the Catholic solicitor, Pat Finucane, who counted a number of prominent republicans among his clients. Other victims included known Provos and high ranking republicans; but a handful – perhaps five – were so-called innocents, people who had no other reason to die other than the fact they were Catholic.
– Neil Mackay, The Sunday Herald, November 26, 2000

Prior to Kerr’s involvement in northern Ireland, he had already established a reputation as a hard-line Cold-War ‘warrior’ when he was stationed in Berlin in the 1980s where his group known as the Int Corp almost succeeded in wrecking intelligence operations against the Soviets.

And it is important to note that Kerr was no ‘loose cannon’,

[A]ccording to FRU sources, [Kerr] was not a maverick – he was sanctioned from the top. After leaving the FRU … Kerr returned to Berlin on more intelligence matters and was then promoted to brigadier – hardly evidence that military top brass and the government were displeased with his undercover operations in Ulster.

In army terms, Kerr has what’s termed ‘’protezione’’ – a Mafia term meaning protection. Kerr has connections going right to the heart of the British establishment and his [former] position as military attache to Beijing makes him the effective joint number two in Britain’s entire military intelligence operation. – Neil Mackay

Although I can’t prove it, what the capture of the two SAS/SRR operatives reveals is the obvious attempt on the part of the occupation forces to destabilize the situation in Iraq by attempting to divide the resistance, a classical colonial tactic that the Brits are so damn good at.

So here we have two provocateurs badly disguised as Iraqis, in a car packed with weapons and explosives who were intercepted by the Iraqi police and who clearly didn’t want to be exposed, hence the fire fight. The obvious conclusion to draw is that they were going to plant bombs that would then be blamed on the ‘insurgents’ and/or the Iranians.

The events in Basra have to be set in the historical context not only of the fictitious ‘war on terror’ and its role in justifying US/UK policies and the subsequent repressive measures being used to curb domestic opposition, but in the creation of the ‘bogeyman’ ‘al-Zarqawi’ who is certainly a creation of Western propaganda agencies (whether he actually exists or not).

And equally importantly as far as US/UK domestic audiences are concerned is the role played by the media in peddling such trash to a public that is overwhelmed with a continuous barrage of ‘al-Qu’eda’ this and ‘al-Zarqawi’ that on a daily basis, without a single shred of evidence to substantiate such claims that either are involved in the Iraqi resistance to the occupation. The occasional story that makes it through the minefield of corporate/state media gets lost in the welter of propaganda.

The following two stories, both from the Times on Sunday reveal just how closely the ‘official’ story and the one put out by the media are in lockstep with each other. Note that all the British sources (government/MoD) are anonymous, whereas the Iraqi-sourced are named.

The main thrusts of the ‘line’ that allegedly explains what the SAS were up to is as follows: First, the Iraqi forces are not to be trusted, infiltration by ‘insurgents’ etc, and second, yet more infiltration only now it’s the Iranians, thousands according to an Iraqi source.

There are of course, no references to the role (or history) of Kerr or the FRU let alone the allegations concerning the alternative explanation as to what the SAS/SRR operatives were up to.

The first story in the Times on Sunday (25/9/05) pretty well sums up one ‘line’ being peddled,

British officials say Iranian Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officers are active inside Basra, surreptitiously funding both the Badr brigades, blamed for the recent killings of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, and the “Mahdi” army of the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Though the article doesn’t present one piece of proof that this is the case. Instead, we get assertions that “thousands” of Iranian agents are inside Iraq. The piece then goes on to quote the usual unnamed British source

“Since the increase in attacks against UK forces two months ago a 24-strong team of SAS soldiers has been working out of Basra to provide a safety net to stop the bombers getting into the city from Iran,” said a source with inside knowledge of the operation last week.

“The aim is to identify routes used by insurgents and either capture or kill them.”

As part of that mission two SAS troopers, dressed in Arab clothes, were driving through Basra in a white Nissan on “close recce patrol” last Monday morning.

And the reason the SAS men opened fire on the Iraqi police? The Times piece regurgitates the original Brit government allegation that the Iraqi police are not to be trusted. Once more, an unnamed source tells the Times

According to one former [British] officer with experience of Iraq, troopers believe the Iraqi police are never to be trusted because their ranks are plagued by militia members and insurgents.

“It is commonly accepted that if you are captured by the Iraqi police there is every chance you will be handed over to the militia – which is akin to a death sentence,” he said. “So the rule of thumb is to avoid being captured at all costs.”

How convenient. The second story in the Times makes it plain that it’s all Iran’s fault. Titled ‘SAS in secret war against Iranian agents’, where we learn that the

TWO SAS soldiers rescued last week after being arrested by Iraqi police and handed over to a militia were engaged in a “secret war” against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.

Again, the source for this is the British government, and of course, the Iraqi ‘government’, anxious to show that it can’t be Iraqis who are doing the ‘infiltration’ into their own armed forces. Moreover, the Basra authorities denied that the two men had been handed over to militia even though the Times story states categorically that ‘[t]hey were freed from a nearby house’.

The story continues

“Since the increase in attacks against UK forces two months ago, a 24-strong SAS team has been working out of Basra to provide a safety net to stop the bombers getting into the city from Iran,” said one source. “The aim is to identify routes used by insurgents and either capture or kill them.”

If so, what were they doing in Iraqi clothes shooting at Iraqi police? What the two stories quite clearly reveal is the fact that over the time since the SAS men were nabbed, the British and Iraqi authorities have had time to get their story together, replete with all the usual suspects, ‘foreign infiltrators’ and the not to be trusted Iraqi police. The Times stories takes as fact the British government line even though the actions of the SAS men simply doesn’t fit the scenario described in the two stories.

I am interested on your opinion that there is racist attitude towards the Irish, this is a sweeping statement and racist in itself, i know of not one person that dislikes the Irish.....

If you remain unaware of the centuries of racism practised against the Irish (as well as practically every other nation) by British imperialists and their apologists then ... you are part of the problem _________________¡Venceremos!

Your missing my point conspiring in the murder of people, however wrong this is, has likely been used, but actively driving a 'prepared' vehicle into Basra to blow up indiscriminantly is not SAS/SRR/FRU/14int practises.
The incident that lead to the 'firefight' is unknown, but i would hedge bets that it wasn't a car bomb.

SAS are subject to law and are brought to trial, take the Gibralter shootings, British soldiers are subject to law and regularly brought to court for suspect deaths, there rarely is a whitewash because they don't directly involve themselves in these activities.

Again i do not agree with why we went to war,what we are still doing there......but am trying to point out that nothing untoward was going on!

Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra?
Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports

by Michael Keefer

September 25, 2005

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

That soldier was not Britain’s only terrorist double agent. A second British soldier planted within the IRA claimed he had given forty-eight hours advance notice of the Omagh car-bomb attack to his handlers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, including "details of one of the bombing team and the man’s car registration." Although the agent had made an audio tape of his tip-off call, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC, declared that "no such information was received" (http://www.sundayherald.com/17827).

This second double agent went public in June 2002 with the claim that from 1981 to 1994, while on full British army pay, he had worked for "the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence," as an IRA mole. With the full knowledge and consent of his FRU and MI5 handlers, he became a bombing specialist who "mixed explosive and … helped to develop new types of bombs," including "light-sensitive bombs, activated by photographic flashes, to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices having their signal jammed by army radio units." He went on to become "a member of the Provisional IRA’s ‘internal security squad’—also known as the ‘torture unit’—which interrogated and executed suspected informers" (http://www.sundayherald.com/print25646).

The much-feared commander of that same "torture unit" was likewise a mole, who had previously served in the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Squadron (an elite special forces unit, the Marines’ equivalent to the better-known SAS). A fourth mole, a soldier code-named "Stakeknife" whose military handlers "allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA," was still active in December 2002 as "one of Belfast’s leading Provisionals" (http://www.sundayherald.com/29997).

Reliable evidence also emerged in late 2002 that the British army had been using its double agents in terrorist organizations "to carry out proxy assassinations for the British state"—most notoriously in the case of Belfast solicitor and human rights activist Pat Finucane, who was murdered in 1989 by the Protestant Ulster Defence Association. It appears that the FRU passed on details about Finucane to a British soldier who had infiltrated the UDA; he in turn "supplied UDA murder teams with the information" (http://www.sundayherald.com/29997).

Recent events in Basra have raised suspicions that the British army may have reactivated these same tactics in Iraq.

Articles published by Michel Chossudovsky, Larry Chin and Mike Whitney at the Centre for Research on Globalization’s website on September 20, 2005 have offered preliminary assessments of the claims of Iraqi authorities that two British soldiers in civilian clothes who were arrested by Iraqi police in Basra on September 19—and in short order released by a British tank and helicopter assault on the prison where they were being held—had been engaged in planting bombs in the city

A further article by Kurt Nimmo points to false-flag operations carried out by British special forces troops in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and to Donald Rumsfeld’s formation of the P2OG, or Proactive Preemptive Operations Group, as directly relevant to Iraqi charges of possible false-flag terror operations by the occupying powers in Iraq (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050 924&articleid=992).

These accusations by Iraqi officials echo insistent but unsubstantiated claims, going back at least to the spring of 2004, to the effect that many of the terror bombings carried out against civilian targets in Iraq have actually been perpetrated by U.S. and British forces rather than by Iraqi insurgents.

Some such claims can be briskly dismissed. In mid-May 2005, for example, a group calling itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" accused U.S. troops "of detonating car bombs and falsely accusing militants" (http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications45605&Catego ry=publications&Subcategory=0). For even the most credulous, this could at best be a case of the pot calling the kettle soot-stained. But it’s not clear why anyone would want to believe this claim, coming as it does from a group or groupuscule purportedly led by the wholly mythical al-Zarqawi—and one whose very name affiliates it with terror bombers. These people, if they exist, might themselves have good reason to blame their own crimes on others.

Other claims, however, are cumulatively more troubling.

The American journalist Dahr Jamail wrote in April 20, 2004 that the recent spate of car bombings in Baghdad was widely rumoured to have been the work of the CIA:

"The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them. Why? Because as one man states, ‘[CIA agents are] too busy fighting now, and the unrest they wanted to cause by the bombings is now upon them.’ True or not, it doesn’t bode well for the occupiers’ image in Iraq." (http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm)

Two days later, on April 22, 2004, Agence France-Presse reported that five car-bombings in Basra—three near-simultaneous attacks outside police stations in Basra that killed sixty-eight people, including twenty children, and two follow-up bombings—were being blamed by supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on the British. While eight hundred supporters demonstrated outside Sadr’s offices, a Sadr spokesman claimed to have "evidence that the British were involved in these attacks" (http://www.inq7.net/wnw/2004/apr/23/wnw_3_1.htm).

An anonymous senior military officer said on April 22, 2004 of these Basra attacks that "It looks like Al-Qaeda. It’s got all the hallmarks: it was suicidal, it was spectacular and it was symbolic." Brigadier General Nick Carter, commander of the British garrison in Basra, stated more ambiguously that Al Qaeda was not necessarily to blame for the five bombings, but that those responsible came from outside Basra and "quite possibly" from outside Iraq: "’All that we can be certain of is that this is something that came from outside,’ Carter said" (http://www.inq7.net/wnw/2004/apr/23/wnw_4_1.htm). Moqtada al-Sadr’s supporters of course believed exactly the same thing—differing only in their identification of the criminal outsiders as British agents rather than as Islamist mujaheddin from other Arab countries.

In May 2005 ‘Riverbend’, the Baghdad author of the widely-read blog Baghdad Burning, reported that what the international press was reporting as suicide bombings were often in fact "car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs." After one of the larger recent blasts, which occurred in the middle-class Ma’moun area of west Baghdad, a man living in a house in front of the blast site was reportedly arrested for having sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman. But according to ‘Riverbend’, his neighbours had a different story:

"People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away."

Also in May 2005, Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi-exile physicist whose writings helped to discredit American and British fabrications about weapons of mass destruction, reported a story that in Baghdad a driver whose license had been confiscated at an American check-point was told "to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license." After being questioned for half an hour, he was informed that there was nothing against him, but that his license had been forwarded to the Iraqi police at the al-Khadimiya station "for processing"—and that he should get there quickly before the lieutenant whose name he was given went off his shift.

"The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements’."

According to Khadduri, "The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq." On this occasion, the driver’s life was saved when his car broke down on the way to the police station where he was supposed to reclaim his license, and when the mechanic to whom he had recourse "discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives."

Khadduri mentions, as deserving of investigation, a "perhaps unrelated incident" in Baghdad on April 28, 2005 in which a Canadian truck-driver with dual Canadian-Iraqi citizenship was killed. He quotes a CBC report according to which "Some media cited unidentified sources who said he may have died after U.S. forces ‘tracked’ a target, using a helicopter gunship, but Foreign Affairs said it’s still investigating conflicting reports of the death. U. S. officials have denied any involvement."

Another incident, also from April 2005, calls more urgently for investigation, since one of its victims remains alive. Abdul Amir Younes, a CBS cameraman, was lightly wounded by U.S. forces on April 5 "while filming the aftermath of a car bombing in Mosul." American military authorities were initially apologetic about his injuries, but three days later arrested him on the grounds that he had been "engaged in anti-coalition activity"
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/Kafka-does-iraq-the- dist_b_7796.html).

Arianna Huffington, in her detailed account of this case, quite rightly emphasizes its Kafkaesque qualities: Younes has now been detained, in Abu Graib and elsewhere, for more than five months—without charges, without any hint of what evidence the Pentagon may hold against him, and without any indication that he will ever be permitted to stand trial, challenge that evidence, and disprove the charges that might at some future moment be laid. But in addition to confirming, yet again, the Pentagon’s willingness to violate the most fundamental principles of humane and democratic jurisprudence, this case also raises a further question. Was Younes perhaps arrested, like the Iraqi whose rumoured fate was mentioned by ‘Riverbend’, because he had seen—and in Younes’ case photographed—more than was good for him?
Agents provocateurs?

Spokesmen for the American and British occupation of Iraq, together with newspapers like the Daily Telegraph, have of course rejected with indignation any suggestion that their forces could have been involved in false-flag terrorist operations in Iraq.

It may be remembered that during the 1980s spokesmen for the government of Ronald Reagan likewise heaped ridicule on Nicaraguan accusations that the U.S. was illegally supplying weapons to the ‘Contras’—until, that is, a CIA-operated C-123 cargo aircraft full of weaponry was shot down over Nicaragua, and Eugene Hasenfus, a cargo handler who survived the crash, testified that his supervisors (one of whom was Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA agent responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner) were working for then-Vice-President George H. W. Bush.

The arrest—and the urgent liberation—of the two undercover British soldiers in Iraq might in a similar manner be interpreted as casting a retrospective light on previously unsubstantiated claims about the involvement of members of the occupying armies in terrorist bombing attacks on civilians.

The parallel is far from exact: in this case there has been no dramatic confession like that of Hasenfus, and there are no directly incriminating documents like the pilot’s log of the downed C-123. There is, moreover, a marked lack of consensus as to what actually happened in Basra. Should we therefore, with Juan Cole, dismiss the possibility British soldiers were acting as agents provocateurs as a "theory [that] has almost no facts behind it" (http://www.juancole.com)?

Members of Britain's Elite SAS Forces

It appears that when on September 19 suspicious Iraqi police stopped the Toyota Cressida the undercover British soldiers were driving, the two men opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. But the soldiers, identified by the BBC as "members of the SAS elite special forces" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm), were subdued by the police and arrested. A report published by The Guardian on September 24 adds the further detail that the SAS men "are thought to have been on a surveillance mission outside a police station in Basra when they were challenged by an Iraqi police patrol" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/Story/0,2763,1577575,00.html).

As Justin Raimondo has observed in an article published on September 23 at Antiwar.com, nearly every other aspect of this episode is disputed.

The Washington Post dismissively remarked, in the eighteenth paragraph of its report on these events, that "Iraqi security officials variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/20/MNGSSE QNGN1.DTL). Iraqi officials in fact accused them not of one or the other act, but of both.

Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV on September 19 that the soldiers opened fire when the police sought to arrest them, and that their car was booby-trapped "and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market" (quoted by Chossudovsky). A deliberately inflammatory press release sent out on the same day by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr (and posted in English translation at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog on September 20) states that the soldiers’ arrest was prompted by their having "opened fire on passers-by" near a Basra mosque, and that they were found to have "in their possession explosives and remote-control devices, as well as light and medium weapons and other accessories" (http://www.juancole.com).

What credence can be given to the claim about explosives? Justin Raimondo writes that while initial BBC Radio reports acknowledged that the two men indeed had explosives in their car, subsequent reports from the same source indicated that the Iraqi police found nothing beyond "assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear, and medical kit. This is thought to be standard kit for the SAS operating in such a theater of operations" (http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7366).

One might well wonder, with Raimondo, whether an anti-tank weapon is "standard operating equipment"—or what use SAS men on "a surveillance mission outside a police station" intended to make of it. But more importantly, a photograph published by the Iraqi police and distributed by Reuters shows that—unless the equipment is a plant—the SAS men were carrying a good deal more than just the items acknowledged by the BBC. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050 923&articleid=989)

I would want the opinion of an arms expert before risking a definitive judgment about the objects shown, which could easily have filled the trunk and much of the back seat of a Cressida. But this photograph makes plausible the statement of Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, a spokesman for Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia:

"What our police found in their car was very disturbing—weapons, explosives, and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets…" (quoted by Raimondo)

The fierce determination of the British army to remove these men from any danger of interrogation by their own supposed allies in the government the British are propping up—even when their rescue entailed the destruction of an Iraqi prison and the release of a large number of prisoners, gun-battles with Iraqi police and with Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, a large popular mobilization against the British occupying force, and a subsequent withdrawal of any cooperation on the part of the regional government—tends, if anything, to support the view that this episode involved something much darker and more serious than a mere flare-up of bad tempers at a check-point.

US-UK Sponsored Civil War

There is reason to believe, moreover, that the open civil war which car-bomb attacks on civilians seem intended to produce would not be an unwelcome development in the eyes of the occupation forces.

Writers in the English-language corporate media have repeatedly noted that recent terror-bomb attacks which have caused massive casualties among civilians appear to be pushing Iraq towards a civil war of Sunnis against Shiites, and of Kurds against both. For example, on September 18, 2005 Peter Beaumont proposed in The Observer that the slaughter of civilians, which he ascribes to Al Qaeda alone, "has one aim: civil war" (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1572936,00.html). But H. D. S. Greenway had already suggested on June 17, 2005 in the Boston Globe that "Given the large number of Sunni-led attacks against Shia targets, the emerging Shia-led attacks against Sunnis, and the extralegal abductions of Arabs by Kurdish authorities in Kirkut, one has to wonder whether the long-feared Iraqi civil war hasn’t already begun" (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005 /06/17/facing_factsin_iraq?mode=PF). And on September 21, 2005 Nancy Youssef and Mohammed al Dulaimy of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau wrote that the ethnic cleansing of Shiites in predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighbourhoods "is proceeding at an alarming and potentially destabilizing pace," and quoted the despairing view of an Iraqi expert:

"’Civil war today is closer than any time before,’ said Hazim Abdel Hamid al Nuaimi, a professor of politics at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. ‘All of these explosions, the efforts by police and purging of neighbourhoods is a battle to control Baghdad.’"

(http://www.realcities.com/mid/krwashington/12704935.htm)

Whether or not it has already begun or will occur, the eruption of a full-blown civil war, leading to the fragmentation of the country, would clearly be welcomed in some circles. Israeli strategists and journalists proposed as long ago as 1982 that one of their country’s strategic goals should be the partitioning of Iraq into a Shiite state, a Sunni state, and a separate Kurdish part. (See foreign ministry official Oded Yinon’s "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," Kivunim 14 [February 1982]; a similar proposal put forward by Ze’ev Schiff in Ha’aretz in the same month is noted by Noam Chomsky in Fateful Triangle [2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999], p. 457).

A partitioning of Iraq into sections defined by ethnicity and by Sunni-Shia differences would entail, obviously enough, both civil war and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. But these considerations did not deter Leslie H. Gelb from advocating in the New York Times, on November 25, 2003, what he called "The Three-State Solution". (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/three.htm).

Gelb, a former senior State Department and Pentagon official, a former editor and columnist for the New York Times, and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is an insider’s insider. And if the essays of Yinon and Schiff are nasty stuff, especially in the context of Israel’s 1981 bombing attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, there is still some difference between speculatively proposing the dismemberment of a powerful neighbouring country, and actively advocating the dismemberment of a country that one’s own nation has conquered in a war of unprovoked aggression. The former might be described as a diseased imagining of war and criminality; the latter belongs very clearly to the category of war crimes.

Gelb’s essay proposes punishing the Sunni-led insurgency by separating the largely Sunni centre of present-day Iraq from the oil-rich Kurdish north and the oil-rich Shia south. It holds out the dismembering of the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s (with the appalling slaughters that ensued) as a "hopeful precedent."

Gelb’s essay has been widely interpreted as signaling the intentions of a dominant faction in the U.S. government. It has also, very appropriately, been denounced by Bill Vann as openly promoting "a war crime of world-historic proportions" (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/gelb-n26.shtml).

Given the increasing desperation of the American and British governments in the face of an insurgency that their tactics of mass arbitrary arrest and torture, Phoenix-Program or "Salvadoran-option" death squads, unrestrained use of overwhelming military force, and murderous collective punishment have failed to suppress, it comes as no surprise that in recent military actions such as the assault on Tal Afar the U.S. army has been deploying Kurdish peshmerga troops and Shiite militias in a manner that seems designed to inflame ethnic hatreds.

No one, I should hope, is surprised any longer by the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—that fictional construct of the Pentagon’s serried ranks of little Tom Clancies, that one-legged Dalek, that Scarlet Pimpernel of terrorism, who manages to be here, there, and everywhere at once—should be so ferociously devoted to the terrorizing and extermination of his Shiite co-religionists.

Should we be any more surprised, then, to see evidence emerging in Iraq of false-flag terrorist bombings conducted by the major occupying powers? The secret services and special forces of both the U.S. and Britain have, after all, had some experience in these matters.

Global Research Contributing Editor Michael Keefer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph. He is a former President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His most recent writings include a series of articles on electoral fraud in the 2004 US presidential election published by the Centre for Research on Globalization
_________________¡Venceremos!

Monday, September 26, 2005
British Basra bomb bull
All the speculation has forced the British government to come up with a new Official Story on what the two police-murderin', anti-tank-weapon-totin', Arab-dress-sportin' soldiers were up to in Basra:

"TWO SAS soldiers rescued last week after being arrested by Iraqi police and handed over to a militia were engaged in a 'secret war' against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.

The men had left their base near the southern Iraqi city of Basra to carry out reconnaissance and supply a second patrol with 'more tools and fire power', said a source with knowledge of their activities.

They had been in Basra for seven weeks on an operation prompted by intelligence that a new type of roadside bomb which has been used against British troops was among weapons being smuggled over the Iranian border."

and:
"'Since the increase in attacks against UK forces two months ago, a 24-strong SAS team has been working out of Basra to provide a safety net to stop the bombers getting into the city from Iran,' said one source. 'The aim is to identify routes used by insurgents and either capture or kill them.'"

You can replace 'source with knowledge of their activities' by 'Blair spin-artiste' to get a more accurate feeling for what is going on here. As propaganda goes, it's a twofer, simultaneously explaining that these weren't British agents provocateurs, and that Iran is somehow to blame for the problems in Basra. I suppose the secret mission in the hinterland of Basra explains what they were doing in Basra itself, near where there was to be a protest against the British seizure of a local leader blamed by the British for their recent problems in the area. It suppose it also explains why they didn't just identify themselves as British soldiers when challenged, instead of getting into a firefight with local authorities (who, after all, were just doing their jobs). I suppose it also explains why it took the British days and days to come up with their latest version of the truth. The Iraqis, who haven't got the luxury of lying to themselves about the motives of a government which, after all, is a documented liar on the reasons for entering the war in the first place, know what the truth is.

In the meantime, in the last 24 hours we hear that the British are:

definitely pulling out of Iraq starting next May; or

definitely not pulling out; or

sending in more SAS soldiers so they can definitely pull out.

The bottom line is that Tony can't pull out British troops as it would leave his master George too politically exposed, and George - notwithstanding all the planning being done on the 'left' of American politics to make the pull-out as humane as possible - won't remove American troops as long as there are American bases in Iraq. Since there will be American bases in Iraq until the Americans are forced to give them up, I wouldn't be holding my breath on any Anglo-American troop withdrawal any time soon. When it does occur, I can guarantee that it will be done absolutely and completely without the slightest regard to the effect it will have on the Iraqi people, and for totally selfish American reasons.

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Friday, September 23, 2005
Such a dastardly policy
Juan Cole, polite to a fault as always, writes:
"Some kind readers have been asking me if it is possible that the British SAS operatives captured by the Iraqi police on Monday were agents provocateurs planning to blow things up and blame some Iraqi group. My answer is that while it cannot be absolutely ruled out, the theory has almost no facts behind it. It is not even clear if the British agents had a bomb in their car, and they may not after all have killed Iraqi police who came to grab them. I'd need way more evidence than now exists to charge the British military with such a dastardly policy."

Kurt Nimmo provides a good summary of the history of SAS 'counter-insurgency' techniques. The Irish know all about this:
"Sinister covert operations by British forces in Iraq are 'reminiscent of the activities of the SAS' in the North, a leading human rights campaigner said last night.

Paul O'Connor, of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre (PFC), demanded that the British government 'break the cycle of abuse' imposed by its forces."

and:
"Mr O'Connor was speaking to Daily Ireland after further details emerged about an incident in Basra on Monday afternoon involving undercover British operatives.

The incident drew parallels with the March 1988 attack on the funeral of IRA volunteer Caoimhghin Mac Bradaigh.

During that incident, two armed and undercover army intelligence operatives drove directly at the cortege in west Belfast. After firing a shot, both soldiers were subsequently captured, beaten and shot dead by the IRA."

The kit of the captured soldiers included an anti-tank weapon (and who is the only force with tanks in Basra?), and towing equipment (to tow a booby-trapped car filled with explosives?). It would seem to me that the onus is clearly on the British military to prove that its men weren't up to "such a dastardly policy".

I remember the radical historian, E.P. Thompson, in the 1980's observing in his book, Writing by Candlelight, that one of the great dangers of UK undercover exercises in Ireland would be that these would be imported back to the mainland. As history shows this is exactly what happened.

Several UK governments have been able to continue their imperialist pretensions by attaching themselves to US foreign policy and its militaristic thrust all over the planet. Irak was the last, we must pray that Iran won't be next. Can you imagine the horror of this unspeakable quisling, Blair, dragging our country into a probable nuclear offensive against that most ancient of civilisations?

Due either to social conditioning or Aunty BBC's sly methods of news management (or both) Brits seem to think that wherever we send our Tommies it's only for the good of democracy and peace-keeping! Just as the good people of the USA have had to wake up from a similar delusion an awakening is well overdue over here.

Only by going to the root of the problem, via 9/11, 7/7, Irak can we hope to bring about this sea-change of public awareness._________________¡Venceremos!

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger questions the British version of sinister events in Basra, Iraq, on 19 September, and fills in the gaps in news that has become 'like watching a satire' of the war. : Pilger : 27 Sep 2005

SINISTER EVENTS IN A CYNICAL WAR

Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men "rescued" from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

According to the head of Basra's Governing Council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event, or do we simply accept Defence Secretary John Reid's customary arrogance? "Iraqi law is very clear,? he said. ?British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process." He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq?s occupiers.

Watching "embedded" journalists in Iraq and London, attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime's "writ" did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and the "British trained" police in Basra might be "infiltrated". An outraged Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two of our boys - in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury - could possibly be arrested by police in a "democratic" society. "Aren't they supposed to be on our side?" he demanded.

Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men's unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the "radical" cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Radical" is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the "rescue"? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman, Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr's followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival. "When the police tried to stop them," he said, "[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing - weapons, explosives and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists."

The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the "coalition" is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq - which it is, overwhelmingly - and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of Al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon's "Strategic Information Program" set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans' single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi.

Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis' right to resist an illegal invasion - a right enshrined in international law - has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shi'ites and the Sunni. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh said this week, "There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other... The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will start an internal Shi'ite incitement."

The Anglo-American goal of "federalism" for Iraq is part of an imperial strategy of provoking divisions in a country where traditionally the communities have overlapped, even inter-married. The Osama-like promotion of al-Zarqawi is integral to this. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he is everywhere but nowhere. When the Americans crushed the city of Fallujah last year, the justification for their atrocious behaviour was "getting those guys loyal to al-Zarqawi". But the city's civil and religious authorities denied he was ever there or had anything to do with the resistance.

"He is simply an invention." said the Imam of Baghdad's al-Kazimeya mosque. "Al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north. His family even held a ceremony after his death." Whether or not this is true, al-Zaqawi's "foreign invasion" serves as Bush's and Blair's last veil for their "war on terror" and botched attempt to control the world's second biggest source of oil.

On 23 September, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, an establishment body, published a report that accused the US of "feeding the myth" of foreign fighters in Iraqi who account for less than 10 per cent of a resistance estimated at 30,000. Of the eight comprehensive studies into the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the "coalition", four put the figure at more than 100,000. Until the British army is withdrawn from where it has no right to be, and those responsible for this monumental act of terrorism are indicted by the International Criminal Court, Britain is shamed.
First published in the New Statesman - www.newstateman.co.uk_________________¡Venceremos!

What was the British SAS doing in Basra?
By Chris Marsden
28 September 2005

The September 19 arrest of two undercover Special Air Service officers in Basra, traveling in an unmarked car containing weapons and explosives, has led to numerous accusations that they were acting as agents provocateurs.

The BBC reported that the SAS men’s car contained “weapons, explosives and communications gear,” before claiming that these were “standard kit for British special forces.”

But in a September 27 article, one of the more serious reporters on the Middle East, Robert Fisk, wrote in the Independent, “Remember how we were told that our immense experience of ‘peace-keeping’ in Northern Ireland had allowed us to get on better with the Iraqis in the south than our American cousins further north?”

Replying to his own question, he wrote, “I don’t actually remember us doing much ‘peacekeeping’ in Belfast after about 1969—the rest, I recall, was about biffing the IRA—but in any case the myth was burned out on the uniforms of British troops this week.

“Indeed, much of the war in Northern Ireland appeared to revolve around the use of covert killings and SAS undercover operatives who blew away IRA men in ambushes.”

After making this correct observation of how British imperialism stirred up sectarian tensions and carried out political assassinations in order to preserve its rule over its oldest colonial possession, Fisk continues, “Which does raise the question, doesn’t it, as to just what our two SAS lads were doing cruising around Basra in Arab dress with itsy-bitsy moustaches and guns? Why did no one ask? How many SAS men are in southern Iraq? Why are they there? What are their duties? What weapons do they carry? Whoops! No one asked.”

Fisk does not say directly what he believes the SAS was up to. However, in the Arab media the accusations of the Mehdi army led by Moqtada al-Sadr and others that the two officers were acting as provocateurs are discussed openly.

Al Jazeera quoted Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, spokesman for the Mehdi army, stating, “What our police found in their car was very disturbing—weapons, explosives, and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets.”

The news agency continues, “What needs to be given more attention in the wake of recent clashes that broke out in Basra following the arrest of two British soldiers last week is whether those commandos were planning an attack or not, whether their car did have explosives or not. The answer to this question is crucial for the future of Iraq and Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror.’

“If allegations that the soldiers’ car was loaded with explosives were proved, this will strengthen the theory suggesting that the British and American intelligence is involved in the persistent and violent acts of ‘terror’ spreading across Iraq, which means that the current ‘counterinsurgency’ efforts involve the premeditated killing of innocent civilians to achieve the US policy objectives. Isn’t this the very definition of terrorism?”

Regarding the issue of explosives, as well as citing the report by the BBC’s Paul Wood, Al Jazeera also notes a report by the Chinese news service Xinhuanet stating that the SAS “soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives.”

It also cites a report by Jonathan Finer of the Washington Post’s foreign office, stating, “Monday’s clashes stemmed from the arrest by Iraqi police on Sunday of two Britons, whom Iraqi police accused of planting bombs.”

Amongst a number of reports from Syrian and Turkish news sources, it singles out a Syrian correspondent in Baghdad, Ziyad al-Munajjid. He writes: “Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets.

“This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period.”

Al Jazeera also quotes a report in Britain’s Telegraph citing Baghdad Muslim cleric Abdel al-Daraji’s statement that “Britain was plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out mass-casualty bombings targeting Shiite civilians and then blaming the attacks on Sunni groups.

“Everyone knows the occupiers’ agenda. Their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq.”

The Telegraph article is in fact an attempt to refute such allegations as a “smear campaign” designed to “stoke growing anti-British sentiment in southern Iraq.” But the Telegraph offers no alternative explanation as to why the SAS would be carrying substantial quantities of explosives and makes no attempt to deny such reports.

Similarly the BBC’s claim that high explosives are standard issue for the SAS raises more questions than it provides answers.

Why would explosives be required for any other type of undercover operation than the manufacture and planting of bombs?

The only alternative explanation so far advanced was in the pages of the Sunday Times, which wrote a number of related articles claiming that the SAS was involved in an extensive counterinsurgency operation targeting Iranian-backed militias.

The two officers were “engaged in a ‘secret war’ against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.” The Times cited “a source with knowledge of their activities,” claiming that the captured patrol was bringing “more tools and fire power” to a second patrol.

The Times cites another source stating that “a 24-strong SAS team has been working out of Basra to provide a safety net to stop the bombers getting into the city from Iran. The aim is to identify routes used by insurgents and either capture or kill them.”

There is clearly Iranian involvement in the Iraqi quagmire created by the United States’ and Britain’s illegal war of aggression. But again, why would an operation to prevent the movement of weapons across the Iraqi border involve explosives?

The account by the Times does not mention explosives, but does cite an Iraqi police officer, Khaled Abdul Baqi, stating that “equipment that resembled a large remote control of sorts” was found inside the SAS men’s car.

In any event, Britain’s semi-official denials count for very little in Basra. The response by the two undercover SAS officers to Iraqi police attempts to stop them at a checkpoint suggests that they had something sinister to hide. The two opened fire, reportedly killing a person and wounding several others, including police officers.

The official explanation is that the army is now instructed to treat the local police force as part of the insurgency, because it is so infiltrated by militia groups. This was also the army’s attitude when it mounted a rescue operation of the two officers from the local police facility. Some 10 armoured personnel vehicles and a helicopter were used to storm the building and attack around a thousand demonstrators, incensed by the discovery of the SAS’s activities. The British Army used live fire and baton rounds in its assault, killing several people and injuring many more.

In the immediate aftermath of September 19, British control of Basra is facing mounting popular opposition. There are widespread reports of demonstrations against the British. Local authorities have withdrawn cooperation with the occupation forces and the city’s anti-terrorist judge has issued an arrest warrant for the two SAS officers.

Britain has rejected the legality of the arrest warrant and refused a compensation demand for the victims of the assault on the police facility. Instead, Defence Minister John Reid has said he intends to scrap the 25,000-strong police force in southern Iraq and “replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order.”

Creating the conditions for such increased repression has always been an essential aim of the dirty tricks operations with which the SAS is associated.

See Also:
British troops in pitched battle in Basra
[21 September 2005]_________________¡Venceremos!

But you, as do my friends, hold your opinions which i'm sure you enjoy discussing, but i do feel it is counter productive to subject UK forces to a Judge Dredd style law, guilty before proven innocent.

"What our police found in their car was very disturbing - weapons, explosives, and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets." Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, spokesman for the Mehdi Army

By Mike Whitney

09/24/05 "ICH" -- -- We are only interested in one thing regarding the melee that broke out in Basra following the arrest of two British commandoes on September 20: whether or not the car they were driving contained explosives? The answer to that question could decide the future of Iraq as well as the fate of Bush's war on terror. Nothing should deter us from getting to the bottom of this crucial question and no extraneous fact or fiction should divert our attention from uncovering the answer.

If it can be clearly established that there were explosives in that vehicle then we can say with some degree of certainty that the wave of terrorism that is spreading across Iraq is, at least, in part the work of British and American Intelligence. That would imply that current counterinsurgency efforts now involve the premeditated killing of innocent people to achieve the stated policy objectives. This is the very definition of terrorism.

Early news reports from both the BBC and the Washington Post confirmed allegations that bomb-making material was discovered in the captured vehicle. The Post's Ellen Knickmeyer stated, "The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES." (Washington Post, 9-20-05; "British Smash into Jail to Free Two Detained Soldiers) Neither the Post nor the BBC have printed retractions or clarifications on this story even though it has swept across the internet with a fury not seen since the Downing Street memo. In fact, this story is significantly more important. The entire war on terror is predicated on the belief that the murdering of innocent people cannot be rationalized. The incident in Basra puts all that into question.

Bush has marshaled the public fear from 9-11 into a rallying cry for his global-onslaught. He has waved the bloody-shirt of terror to enhance his power as executive and declare a permanent state of war. Terror has provided the foundation for savaging civil liberties, imprisoning American citizens, and acting with complete impunity.

"The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out on September 11 were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war", Bush boomed. The powers of the "war president" depend entirely on his nebulous war on terror.

The same is true for Tony Blair. The British PM has acted-out the same rituals as Bush; railing against the "evil ideology" of Muslim fanaticism saying, "We must confront and deal head on with the extremism that is based on a perversion of the true faith of Islam."

Blair's fulminations have resulted in the most extraordinary attack on civil liberties in the last 100 years. His pretentious rhetoric has produced a de facto state of martial law for Muslims living in England.

Now his muddled justification for endless war and butchery is facing its greatest challenge; a Ford Cressida packed with a trunk-load of explosives on the streets of Basra. If proof emerges that the car contained bombs then Bush's war of terror will fall apart like a mobile home in a Texas hurricane.

The Chinese news service Xinhuanet reported that, "A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover that they were two British soldiers. The soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives." (Xinhuanet 9-20-05) The same basic story appeared on Syrian and Turkish TV, and in other news reports in the Gulf States

The Washington Post's foreign office filed a similar report by Jonathan Finer stating that, "Monday's clashes stemmed from the arrest by Iraqi police on Sunday of two Britons, WHOM IRAQI POLICE ACCUSED OF PLANTING BOMBS".

And then there was this from Syrian correspondent in Baghdad Ziyad al-Munajjid:

"Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period." Abdel al-Daraji, Muslim cleric in Baghdad told the UK Telegraph that "Britain was plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out mass-casualty bombings targeting Shia civilians and then blaming the attacks on Sunni groups."

"Everyone knows the occupiers agenda, said al-Daraji. "Their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq."

Whether the reports are accurate or not is almost irrelevant. They feed the widespread dissatisfaction with the occupation and contribute to the conspiracy theories that animate the national discourse. The belief that the British and American black-ops are behind the violence has captured the popular imagination and will be impossible to dispel. The damage to the occupation is incalculable.

As the story spreads through Iraq, support for the al-Jaafari government is certain to wane and the Shi'ites will increasingly drift towards the resistance. The occupation leaders will have to devise a strategy to restore confidence in their legitimacy or face the steady erosion of support. If that proves to be impossible, then we're bound to see more radicalized Shi'ites entering the rival camp. A massive movement of Shi'ites into the resistance would pose a serious challenge to the ongoing American-British presence.

The Basra incident is a fatal blow to the Pentagon's narrative of foreign terrorists stirring up trouble in Iraq. The military depends heavily on the al-Zarqawi myth to feed public fears and divert attention from a brutish occupation. From this point forward every terrorist bombing and random act of violence will be scrutinized as (potentially) the work of British or American agents.

How can Bush and Blair hope to allay the suspicions of Iraqi people after Basra?

What can they possibly do to rebuild faith in the stated goals of the occupation?

The Basra incident is another milestone in the faltering war on terror. The questions that emerge are fundamental to understanding whether we are engaged in a noble effort to liberate and democratize the Iraqi people, or complicit in the deliberate murder of innocent civilians.

If the car driven by the two commandos was loaded with explosives, then we can assume that it would have been used to kill civilians.

Why does this surprise us?

We've already seen the "Shock and Awe" invasion that cost tens of thousands of lives. We've already seen the horrific photos of tortured and sadistically abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We've already heard the news of the 200 prisoners at Guantanamo who are starving themselves to death under the Pentagon's watchful eye. We've already chronicled the calculated destruction of Iraqi society and the daily assault on their main cities. We've already read of the use of napalm, cluster-bombs, unidentified chemicals and other banned weapons on civilian enclaves. And, we've already noted the growing number of young Sunni men who bob-along the Euphrates River after being shot in the back of the head by the CIA-trained goons at the Interior Ministry.

Is it so hard to believe that Special Forces are now directly involved in attacks on civilians?

Aren't we seeing the logical extension of a policy that rejects all ethical and moral constraints? A policy of absolute barbarism?

Is it so hard to believe that Special Forces are now directly involved in attacks on civilians?

Aren't we seeing the logical extension of a policy that rejects all ethical and moral constraints? A policy of absolute barbarism?

Basra will tell.

Absolutely proved and caught red-hand
Never mind the cratered attacks on the Un and the Red Cross, this tells the story of everyday manipulation and the development of civil war and partition, c/o her majesty's forces

The possibility that the two undercover agents were actually Israelis makes sense to me. As the Brits used the UDA in Ireland, why not Israelis in an Arabic country, when Israelis are so good at passing off as Arabs and with Mossad's track-record for black ops within Israel?

Also, that's why the Brits were so swift and heavy in their response to extricate the two and get rid of their car. After all, they wouldn't want to upset their pals in Mossad, would they? Especially, not after the London bombings _________________¡Venceremos!

Ian Cranes video has made me a little less reticent about charging the Zionists with involvement in this current scenario
They are what they are and no-one dare charge Mossad and the Israeli government for fear of anti-semitism charges
It's like the whole history of Jew-hatred is put up against this particular time
Where Israel is the operative and we dare hardly mention it for fear of the charge of anti-semitism
Keith tried to change this around in his leaflet on 7/7 with the new forgery of the Protocols of the Young Muslims of Zion
It's a bit difficult for the pjs to accept

Of course it doesnt matter really - Mossad is just a creation of British MI and the CIA in the first place, with a very long leash and a MO which the western intelligence agencies now feel free to keep up with

Last edited by paul wright on Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:46 am; edited 1 time in total

Yes, but we must go beyond that fear to the Truth. I am certainly not anti-Jewish by any means (and lets not forget that Arabs, too, are semites!) but will have no truck with Zionism.

Nor does Noam Chomsky who is Jewish but will not have anything to do with the rightist nature of Zionism. Zionism is a form of elite racism and howevermuch Zionists try to confuse it with Judaism as a religion the two must be kept apart.

Never forget that there are many anti-Zionist Jews and Israelis! They are on our side, despite the battlefield conditions in which they find themselves. If we really wish to honour the holocaust victims it is they we should support by troubling to explain to those who might not appreciate the difference that Zionism is NOT Judaism and certainly not Israel as a nation.

You should read Chomsky's reminiscences of the mixed feelings so many like he had when the state of Israel was created. You'll find two extremely interesting audios with Chomsky at Democracy Now!.Org.

Zionism>Racism>Fascism>NWO Totalitarianism

We really have to find something to replace the old slogans of the socialist Internationale, workers of the world unite, along the lines of planetary citizenship: One Planet, One Humanity, One Future.

This, I am convinced, is the only vision worth holding and following. It's a powerful vision and the only thing that can give us, as individuals, the strength and the willpower to deal with the forces of reaction which will inevitably rear up against anyone who chooses to make the evolutionary step forward. It's what we're dealing with now _________________¡Venceremos!

The Shia militia in Basra, southern Iraq yesterday accused London of masterminding terrorist attacks in the country. "Everyone knows the occupiers' agenda," insisted Mr Daraji, who is currently the only Mahdi army official authorised to speak directly on Sadr's behalf. "They are in bed with Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service] and their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq."

See Also: So what were two undercover British soldiers up to in Basra? - Sunday, September 25, 2005

Shia militia fires up anti-British hatred after SAS rescue

By Adrian Blomfield in Baghdad, 23/09/2005

The Shia militia accused of taking two SAS soldiers hostage in Basra this week sought to stoke growing anti-British sentiment in southern Iraq yesterday by accusing London of masterminding terrorist attacks in the country.

The smear campaign is another blow to the British Army's hopes of restoring its affection among locals and its previously good relationship with Basra's administration - two factors that have distinguished the British-controlled south from Iraq's chaotic Sunni Arab provinces.

Relations with Iraqi authorities in the country's second city sank to their lowest level after Basra's governing council announced it was ending all co-operation with British forces in response to Monday's rescue of the two soldiers.

He told Reuters news agency: "The governing council has decided to stop all co-operation with the British until they meet three demands. To apologise for what happened, to guarantee that it does not happen again, and third, to provide some compensation for all the damage they did during the operation."

British diplomats expressed hope that a compromise could be found, saying the conditions were "not insurmountable".

A British embassy spokesman in Basra said: "We've had two and a half years of fantastic relations. The conditions they have laid out shouldn't be a problem.

''We regret the disturbances to the people of Basra but the situation demanded the response. British lives were in danger, civil authority had broken down and there was a serious danger they had been handed over to Shia militia."

British Warrior armoured vehicles punched holes in the wall of a police station where the two men were initially held and then destroyed a building belonging to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army where they were later transferred. Senior aides of Sadr, who twice led bloody uprisings against American forces in the south last year, sought to capitalise on a rumour that has gained widespread acceptance in Basra that the two men were Israeli spies caught trying to plant bombs.

Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, the cleric's top official in his main bastion, the sprawling Sadr City slums of Baghdad, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain was plotting to start an ethnic war by carrying out mass-casualty bombings targeting Shia civilians and then blaming the attacks on Sunni Arab groups.

"Everyone knows the occupiers' agenda," insisted Mr Daraji, who is currently the only Mahdi army official authorised to speak directly on Sadr's behalf.

"They are in bed with Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service] and their intention is to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their interests in Iraq." But Mr Daraji insisted that Sadr was not going to call for a Shia uprising in Basra, where he enjoys only a limited, if growing, following in the city's slums.

"We have to take the moral high ground and resist this provocation by the British," he said. "This is a very dangerous, very sensitive time in Iraq but we must calm our supporters or we will fall into the British trap."

Sadr has been keen to cultivate a degree of legitimacy since he agreed to join the political process last year. But he has recently come out in opposition to a new constitution and some western diplomats say he is again trying to stir up his followers.

"He is basically trying to keep them just under boiling point so that, if he chooses the road of violence, they will jump when he gives the command," a diplomat in Baghdad said.

Sadr yesterday sent an envoy, Mudhafar al-Moussawi, to the south, ostensibly with orders to calm his supporters. But the envoy's message, delivered on radio broadcasts, was far from calming. He described this week's incidents in Basra as "a second Abu Ghraib". He also called on the British people to rise up and "overthrow the terrorist government of Tony Blair''. In many ways, Sadr does not need to start an uprising in Basra. He already enjoys a disproportionate degree of influence on both the police force and the city's administration.

The Jameat police station where the two soldiers were originally held is under the control of the internal affairs and serious crimes unit, the most influential department in Basra's police force - and the most heavily penetrated by the Mahdi army.

Sadr will also be convinced that the withdrawal of co-operation from the Basra administration will effectively corral British troops in barracks, solidifying the Mahdi army's control of the city.

Although British soldiers have maintained a much lower profile in Basra since Monday, joint patrols with the police have not been entirely suspended.

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1326
UNITED STATES CAUGHT IN IRAQ CAR-BOMBING

Friday, October 14, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com

It's happened again - allied troops being caught with bombs. This time it is the Americans captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad. Last time, as FMNN reported only weeks ago, two British soldiers, apparently working for British intelligence, were caught near Baghdad similarly equipped.

According to the Mirror-World, "A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday. … Residents of western Baghdad's al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon. Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the … police." Just as in the British incident, the Iraq police arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces - and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and wisked away before any questioning could take place.

The incidents are said to be fueling both puzzlement and animosity among Iraqis. Yet the motivation behind such activities remains formally unknown since in both cases the soldiers involved have been removed with an efficiency that has quashed any attempts at an interrogation.
staff&nbspreports - Free-Market News Network_________________¡Venceremos!

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